An unplanned and unexpected bonus with my trip to the FDL 2009 conference was the co-located S4D conference. S4D means System, Software, SoC and Silicon Debug, and is a conference that has grown out of some recent workshops on the topic of debugging, as seen from the perspective of hardware designers (mostly). S4D was part of the same package as FDL and DASIP, entrance to one conference got you into the other two too. As I did not know about S4D until quite late in the process, this was a great opportunity for me to look at what they were doing.
Tag Archives: P4080
Freescale P4080, in Physical Form
Past Tuesday, I attended the Freescale Design With Freescale (DWF) one-day technology event in Kista, Stockholm. This is a small-scale version of the big Freescale Technology Forum, and featured four tracks of talks running from the morning into the afternoon. All very technical, aimed at designing engineers.
EETimes.com – Multicore CPUs face slow road in comms
The EETimes article Multicore CPUs face slow road in comms piqued my interest. There is an interesting chart in there about just how slow more-than-one-core processors will be in penetrating a vaguely defined “comms” market place. I can believe that, but I think their comments on the PowerQUICC series require some commentary…
Adding to Schirrmeister’s Virtual Platform Myth Busting
Frank Schirrmeister of Synopsys recently published a blog post called “Busting Virtual Platform Myths – Part 1: “Virtual Platforms are for application software only”. In it, he is refuting a claim by Eve that virtual platforms are for application-level software-development only, basically claiming that they are mostly for driver and OS development and citing some Synopsys-Virtio Innovator examples of such uses. In his view, most appication-software is being developed using host-compiled techniques. I want to add to this refutal by adding that application-software is surely a very important — and large — use case for virtual platforms.
EDA Tech Forum Article on Ecosystem Enablement
I have an article about ecosystem enablement for new hardware, co-authored with Richard Schnur of Freescale published in the December 2008 issue of EDA Tech Forum. The core concept is that a virtual platform solution makes it possible to get a new chip to market faster with better software support, and even enables virtual design-in of a chip at OEM customers before hardware becomes available. The article builds on our joint experience with the QorIQ P4080 launch in the Summer of 2008, where we had several operating systems and middleware packages in place at the moment the chip was announced. EDA Tech Forum requires registration, but it was still free, and there are many other good articles available.
Article in Elektronik i Norden: Virtual Platforms
I have an article appearing in the latest issue of Elektronik i Norden, about using virtual platforms for multicore computer systems. It is framed in the context of the Freescale multicore push, in particular the QorIQ P4080, and addresses the common issues of debug, execution speed, and the need to zoom in on details every once in a while.
Freescale QorIQ P4080 Hybrid Simulation on YouTube(!)
YouTube – Freescale QorIQ P4080 Hybrid Simulation is a video of a demo of the QorIQ P4080 hybrid simulation. Cool of Freescale to be publishing it like this, I think it is a very smart move!
Updated: Here is the video inline, let’s see if this works.
Freescale QorIQ P4080 is out — with Simics support
Only half an hour ago, the embargoes lifted. Freescale announced its new QorIQ series of multicore (and some single- and dual-core) processors. For the top-end of that line, the P4080, Freescale and Virtutech (where I work, remember) have developed a virtual platform solution to help Freescale customers get to working products faster. The virtual platform is available now, and is already running several operating systems including VxWorks, QNX, and a variety of Linuxes. Apart from the fairly large scale of this SoC, the really new part of the virtual platform is the so-called Hybrid solution, where the fast models are combined with detailed models from Freescale themselves. This creates a cycle-level detailed model with validated timing, “from the source” — but without the performance issues of having to run everything at great level of detail. Rather, you use the fast model to steer the simulation of a workload to an interesting spot, and then turn up the level of detail then and there. You can also select which components of the chip are actually detailed and which parts are modeled with the fast functional models, avoiding the incredible slow-down of running and entire virtual platform at a great level of detail.
If you happen to be at the FTF in Orlando, do come by and look at the demos!
I have been involved in this work for the past year, and it is wonderful to finally see it coming out and be able to talk about it.